Updated November 18, 2015 at 8:01 PM;Posted November 18, 2015 at 7:00 AM

Mary Taylor

Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor speaks last month on the Statehouse steps in Columbus, joined by members of Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD). Taylor has been boosting her public profile as she explores a run for governor in 2018. She would inherit the job if Gov. John Kasich wins the presidency or vice presidency next year.
(Tom Dodge, The Columbus Dispatch via The AP)

Even on TV, where the lieutenant governor stars in a commercial for Medicare open enrollment, ostensibly in her duties as director of the state's Department of Insurance.

With these moves and others, Taylor has staked a surprisingly aggressive claim to a 2018 race for governor that is shaping up to be a battle of top GOP talent.

Attorney General Mike DeWine, a former U.S. senator, is arguably Ohio's most popular officeholder. Secretary of State Jon Husted is a rising star. Both were plotting gubernatorial bids before winning new terms in their current jobs.

Until last month, Taylor only factored into 2018 scenarios conditionally. Fair or not, she has a reputation in Statehouse circles for keeping bankers' hours and for hating campaigns - fundraising in particular. The thinking was that Taylor only would run for governor if her path were made easier by the power of inherited incumbency.

Taylor knows the rap on her. This public posturing is a message to the critics and skeptics. And when we met recently in her Columbus office, it was clear she had prepared for questions about her work habits, her political acumen and her disagreements with Kasich.

"I'm trying to think of all the questions they said you would ask me," Taylor told me at the end of the interview as she nodded at two aides and chuckled. "And by the way, you hit all of them."

Yet somehow I stumped her on a much simpler query. What are some of the qualities she believes would make her a good governor? Taylor froze for four seconds.

"Gosh, I guess I haven't given that a whole lot of thought," she finally replied.

"I mean, I have," Taylor continued, launching into a long response that covered her background as a certified public accountant and familiarity with tax issues.

Is this Mary Taylor's moment? How skillfully she navigates the next year will determine how strong a gubernatorial candidate she will be - or if she will be a candidate at all.

The two Taylors

There are two images of Taylor that stick with me. One cuts against the notion that she has a weak stomach for politics. The other validates it completely.

In 2012, she campaigned enthusiastically for Mitt Romney. The staple of her stump speech was how excited she was to overhear one of her two sons, a first-time voter at the time, tell a friend he was planning to support the GOP presidential nominee. And she had no trouble delivering harsher, less wholesome red meat when asked.

In 2014, when Kasich, Taylor and their allies ran for re-election on the GOP's statewide ticket, the lieutenant governor maintained her public-speaking chops. But away from the crowds, in a quieter setting that called for a more personal touch, I saw Taylor shrink.

One afternoon I climbed on a bus the Ohio Republican Party had chartered to drum up publicity for its candidates. DeWine and Husted eagerly sat for interviews, talking casually about policy and politics. Taylor holed up in a separate cabin, never to appear.

"She was aware you were on board," an apologetic aide told me.

It's this second image that Taylor skeptics have in mind when they note how she rebuffed party elders when they urged her to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2012.

The conflicting personalities - confident speaker, reluctant glad-hander - are a reminder that Taylor, 49, has only been in professional politics since 2001. In her first five years, she climbed quickly from the city council in Green, a Summit County suburb halfway between Akron and Canton, to the Ohio House of Representatives to state auditor.

Taylor rarely stood out in the House. During the 2006 race for auditor, the Akron Beacon Journal, Taylor's hometown newspaper, described her as a "low-key" legislator.

Her signature moment came in 2003, when she upset GOP leadership by voting against a budget that included a 1-cent increase to the state sales tax. These were different times - times when Republicans punished one of their own for not going along with a tax hike. Taylor lost her coveted seat on the Finance Committee.

Jim Raussen, a Republican from Cincinnati who served with Taylor in the House, confessed to me that he initially did not expect Taylor to have such fortitude.

"She's a good example of 'Don't judge a book by its cover,'" said Raussen, who also lost a committee assignment because of his vote against the budget. "It may have been strategic or her personality, but she would not be on the forefront on a lot of issues in the legislature. One area I did not see her in was deep policy debates or deep discussions. But when it came to the vote, she would make the hard choice. I always had respect for that."

Taylor was the only Republican to win statewide in 2006 and established herself as one of the party's brightest prospects. As auditor, she relished tangling with the state's then-governor, Democrat Ted Strickland. She became a thorn in the side of Jimmy Dimora, then a Cuyahoga County commissioner and one of the most powerful Democrats in the state.

Kasich came calling in 2010, impressed with how Taylor had publicly panned Strickland for a projected $8 billion budget hole. (He has since turned this into a political talking point, bragging of the work he did to close the gap.) That Taylor was a woman from Northeast Ohio - Kasich is from Columbus - didn't hurt.

"I support her 100 percent," Kasich told one of my colleagues last month after being asked about Taylor's gubernatorial ambitions. "She's been a great partner."

Running an office, building a portfolio

But the Kasich-Taylor partnership has not been without its awkward moments.

In late 2011, the governor ordered Taylor to reimburse the state more than $1,000 for rides she hitched to or from the Akron-Canton Airport on Department of Transportation airplanes. The airport is close to Taylor's home, and the revelations by the Columbus Dispatch were a reminder of her preference for working away from the capital.

As auditor, Taylor came under fire for the time she spent at a regional office in Canton that was about 10 minutes from her doorstep. Now lieutenant governor and director of the Insurance Department, Taylor told me she "usually" works in Columbus.

"It's no secret, and I make no apologies for this," she replied when I asked about the time she spends close to home. "My family comes first. And you know what? I tell my staff the same thing."

But Taylor's tolerance for flexible scheduling came back to bite her last year. Her chief of staff and an administrative assistant quit under pressure, after officials said they discovered the employees were billing the public for hours they never worked. In a resignation letter, the assistant cited a "hostile work environment."

Taylor contends the employees took advantage of her. And she dismisses the claim about the work environment as sour grapes from a staffer who had been caught doing wrong.

"I don't agree with what she said," Taylor told me. "I do not know why she said that."

While Kasich and his advisers are pleased with how Taylor handled the problems in her office, the governor and his No. 2 also have had their political differences.

Taylor's pet project is the administration's Common Sense Initiative, which aims to streamline government regulations. More of a conservative ideologue than the pragmatic Kasich is, Taylor lights up whenever she talks about it. Among her internal victories was a minor battle with Kasich, who initially had reservations about the expansion of a temporary licensure program for physicians visiting from other countries.

But the most significant friction between Kasich and Taylor has come on health care. They campaigned together against President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act in 2010. Then Kasich expanded Medicaid - one of Obamacare's key provisions.

When I asked her specifically about Medicaid expansion and whether she disagreed with Kasich, Taylor chose her words carefully.

"We all had concerns ... and we shared our concerns, and we wanted to make sure that at the end of the day this was doing the right thing for the people of Ohio," Taylor said. "I believe the governor firmly believed that was the case, and I supported him when he made the final decision, and I support him today for having made that decision."

Doing the 2018 calculus

I hung around Columbus the week before Election Day to catch Kasich make a rare campaign appearance in his home state and spend some time with Taylor. As I chatted with politicos, there was predictable handicapping of a marijuana legalization initiative, the highlight of the 2015 ballot. There was idle speculation about Kasich's chances in the 2016 field. But so much of the buzz focused on 2018.

In 2006, the last time Republicans had three heavyweights who wanted to be governor, Ken Blackwell beat the arguably more-electable Jim Petro in the primary. Then Strickland trounced Blackwell in the general election. Betty Montgomery, who decided to run for attorney general instead, lost, too. The Big 3 went 0-for-3.

"I'd rather field a team with a bunch of all-stars than a team with no stars," Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges told me. Nevertheless, he will have the unpleasant job of keeping his Big 3 - DeWine, Husted and Taylor - happy.

Borges sees Kasich's White House bid as the great uniter. All three have endorsed Kasich. DeWine and Taylor plan to actively campaign for the governor. Husted, because of his duties as Ohio's elections administrator, is precluded from doing much more.

"In some way, that's counter to their own best interests," Borges said of DeWine and Husted. "If John is successful, it puts Mary Taylor in the governor's office."

Some Republicans interpret Kasich's supportive comments about Taylor as a sign that the governor will put the full weight of his political machine behind her. But Borges told me it's too soon to make too much of Kasich's comments.

"I don't know what other answer you're supposed to give when you are asked about your lieutenant governor," said Borges, who pondered sarcastically: "I'm not for her?"

Those loyal to DeWine and Husted know they cannot underestimate Taylor.

If Kasich maintains his high job-approval numbers, she essentially would run for his third term. (There's a reason her new political committee is called Onward Ohio.) And she would be the lone woman in a race with two men. Republicans also give high marks to Kristen Frissora, Taylor's new consultant and a veteran of U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi's campaigns.

I noticed other strengths in my interview with Taylor. She has a sense of humor and self-awareness. She doesn't come across as a political animal.

Yet most GOP insiders I spoke with - even those who admire Taylor and are inclined to support her - return to her reputation as a slacker. Doesn't like to raise money. Hates campaigning. Better suited for a supporting role.

"The way I respond to statements like that, and of course I hear them," Taylor told me, "is I was the only Republican that won in 2006. I became auditor of state running from a state representative's seat having never run for statewide office ever before. That didn't happen by luck. It took work. It took hard work, and it took fundraising with enough money to get my message out.